RUINS OF SAMARIA. 219 tains that enclose it are lofty. It is a hill in the midst of higher hills; a noble situation for a royal city. A grove of olives covers the plain, and the lower part of the southern side of the hill. On the mountain to the right stands a picturesque village called Nakoura, and on the summit a white tomb of a Moslem saint. We read over the prophecy of Micah* regarding Samaria as we drew near to it, and conversed together as to its full meaning. We asked Dr. Keith what he understood by the expression "I will make Samaria as an heap of the field?" He replied, that he supposed the ancient stones of Samaria would be found, not in the form of a ruin, but gathered into heaps in the same manner as in cleaning a vineyard, or as our farmers at home clear their fields by gathering the stones together. In a little after we found the conjecture to be completely verified. We halted at the eastern end of the hill beside an old aqueduct, and immediately under the ruin of an old Greek church which rises on this side above the miserable village of Subuste.† The ruin is one of the most sightly in the whole of Palestine. We ascended on foot by a narrow and steep pathway, which soon divides into two, and conducts past the foundations of the ruined church to the village. The pathway is enclosed by rude dykes, the stones of which are large and many of them carved, and these are piled rather than built upon one another. Some of them are loose and ready to fall. Many are peculiarly large, and have evidently belonged to ancient edifices. Indeed, the whole face of this part of the hill suggests the idea that the buildings of the ancient city had been thrown down from the brow of the hill. Ascending to the top, we went round the whole summit, and found marks of the same process everywhere. The people of the country, in order to make room for their fields and gardens, have swept off the old houses, and poured the stones down into the valley. Masses of stone, and in one place two broken columns, are seen, as it were, on their way to the bottom of the hill. In the southern valley, we counted thirteen large heaps of stones, most of them piled up round the trunks of the olive-trees. The church above mentioned is the only solid ruin that now remains where the proud city once * Micah i 6. + Herod rebuilt the city and called it Sebaste, which means "august, or venerable," in honour of Augustus Cæsar; but God had written its doom centuries before. stood. In the houses of the villagers, we saw many pieces of ancient columns, often laid horizontally in the wall; in one place, a Corinthian capital, and in another, a finely-carved stone. Near the village, and in the midst of a cultivated field, stood six columns, bare and without their capitals, then seven more that appear to have formed the opposite side of the colonnade; and at a little distance about seventeen more. Again, on the north-east side, we found fourteen pillars standing. But the greatest number were on the north-western brow. Here we counted fifty-six columns in a double row at equal distances, all wanting the capital, many of them broken across, and some having only the base remaining. These ruins may be the remnant of some of Samaria's idolatrous temples, or more probably of a splendid arcade, which may have been carried completely round the city. And these are all that remain of Samaria, "the crown of pride!" The greater part of the top of the hill is used as a field; the crop had been reaped, and the villagers were busy at the thrashing-floor. Part of the southern side is thickly planted with figs, olives, and pomegranates. We found a solitary vine, the only representative of the luxu riant vineyards which once supplied the capital. At one point, a fox sprang across our path into the gardens, a living witness of an unpeopled city. It was most affecting to look round this scene of desolation, and to remember that this was the place where wicked Ahab built his house of Baal, where cruel Jezebel ruled, and where Elijah and Elisha did their wonders. But above all, it filled the mind with solemn awe to read over on the spot the words of God's prophet uttered 2500 years before-"I will make Samaria as an heap of the field, and as plantings of a vineyard; and 1 will pour down the stones thereof into the valley, and I will discover the foundations thereof."* Every clause reveals a new feature in the desolation of Samaria, differing in all its details from the desolation of Jerusalem, and every word has literally come to pass. We had found both on the summit and on the southern valley, at every little interval, heaps of ancient stones piled up, which had been gathered off the surface to clear it for cultivation. There can be no doubt that these stones once formed part of the temples, and palaces, and dwellings of Samaria, so that the word is fulfilled, “I will make Samaria * Mic. i. 6. + See pages 130. 145. FULFILMENT OF PROPHECY. 221 as an heap of the field." We had also seen how completely the hill has been cleared of all its edifices, the stones gathered off it as in the clearing of a vineyard, the only columns that remain standing bare, without their capitals, so that, in all respects, the hill is left like "the plantings of a vineyard," either like the bare vineshoots of a newly planted vineyard, or like the wellcleared terraces where vines might be planted.* Still further, we had seen that the ruins of the ancient city had not been left to moulder away on the hill where they were built, as is the case with other ruined cities, but had been cleared away to make room for the labours of the husbandman. The place where the buildings of the city stood has been tilled, sown, and reaped; and the buildings themselves rolled down over the brow of the hill. Of this, the heaps in the valley, the loose fragments in the rude dykes that run up the sides, and the broken columns on their way down into the valley, are witnesses; so that the destroyers of Samaria (whose very names are unknown), and the simple husbandman, have both unwittingly been fulfilling God's word, "I will pour down the stones thereof into the valley." And last of all, we had noticed that many of the stones in the valley were large and massy, as if they had been foundation-stones of a building, and that in many parts of the vast colonnade nothing more than the bases of the pillars remain. But especially, we observed that the ruined church had been built upon foundations of a far older date than the church itself, the stones being of great size, and bevelled in a manner similar to the stones of the temple wall at Jerusalem, and those of the mosque at Hebron; and these foundations were now quite exposed. So that the last clause of the prophecy is fulfilled with the same awful minuteness, "I will discover the foundations thereof." Surely there is more than enough in the fulfilment of this fourfold prediction to condemn, if it does not convince, the infidel. We examined the old church at the east end of the hill. It is a massy substantial building, supposed to have been built in the time of the Crusades, as there are many crosses of the templars on its architecture. The Mosiems have broken away one of the limbs of each of the crosses in their zeal to shape them into the form of a crescent. Within the area of the church, there is a tomb The word in the original may signify either the bare vine-shoots, or the plat of ground where the vines are planted. |